The microcosm of masonry unit construction can be a rather confusing one, with enormous range of potential brick shapes, materials, and bond patterns. This website is indented to help guide designers in picking a brick wall configuration by providing aesthetic visualization and potential cost data.
Input Parameters
The primary input is the center of line of the wall which can be uploaded using a Rhino.3dm file. The line can be a line, polyline, or a curve.
Designers are are then able to choose from a large quantity of different brick types:
- Modular
- Standard
- Jumbo Modular
- Queen
- Roman
- Norman
- Ambassador
- Modular Economo
- Utility
- Monarch
- Double Utility
- Double Monarch
- CMU
They can then choose between some common brick bonds:
- Running Bond
- English Bond
- Header Bond
- Flemish Bond
- Stacked Bond
And finally some common brick materials:
- Burnt Clay
- Engineered Brick
- Concrete
- Fly Ash
- Sand Lime
Additionally, a few geometric parameters are available such as target joint size and wall height.
The Script
The following is the engine of the website: the grasshopper script which constructs the brick wall.
Metadata
The script outputs a couple of useful data points that can inform the overall decision such as the number of bricks, their costs, and their estimated carbon costs.
Website / UI
Once the script was working, it was then converted into a website using Vue.js and Rhino.compute. The input parameters of the script were connected the sliders and dropdown components of the website. The script was then run on the cloud through Rhino.compute, and the final result is visualized on the website using three.js. The metadata is displayed in a custom window. One of the most challenging parts of the code to figure out was to get the three.js material color to change based on what material parameter was selected.
Conclusion
This project was an exciting experiment in the potential for creating custom web applications through grasshopper and Rhino.compute and provides a gateway for computational designers to make their scripts more accessible.
